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Encore: Ancient Apocalypse or Modern Lies? - TAS 195
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The Archaeology Podcast Network is taking a break for the holiday season. In the meantime, please enjoy this encore episode. It’s a favorite of ours! Happy holidays!
CORRECTION: Graham Hancock wrote Fingerprints of the Gods NOT Chariots of the Gods which was written by Erich von Däniken. Our apologies for mixing up the two titles! The latest archaeological injustice from Graham Hancock is in the form of a brand new, and popular, Netflix series called Ancient Apocalypse. We talk about the eight-episode series, what we liked and what we didn't. Is Graham Hancock right? Is there evidence of an ancient civilization that lived during the last ice age that some how didn't make it through the ice age but did have time to reboot civilization in the people that were left? We'll see.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Archaeology Show
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to The Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast.
Overview of 'Ancient Apocalypse' and Hancock's Theories
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to The Archaeology Show, episode 195. On today's show, we talk about the Netflix series, Ancient Apocalypse.
Thanksgiving Traditions and Personal Experiences
00:00:24
Speaker
Let's dig a little deeper into Graham Hancock's Web of Lies.
00:00:33
Speaker
Welcome to the show, everyone. How's it going? Pretty good. I think I'm still stuffed with turkey. I know. For ah all of you that are not in the United States, we just recently celebrated Thanksgiving. this And I don't know for us, it's kind of like the best holiday of the year. There's not a lot packed in it, except for just family and good food. Yeah, just eating yeah a lot of delicious food is the best. So it's fun. And we're over here in Charlotte, North Carolina with ah Rachel's family. Yep.
00:01:00
Speaker
Yeah. And we have a lot of really specific ideas around Thanksgiving and what we should be having. So and yeah it was good. It was good. there's There's a lot of family recipes involved and it was great.
Netflix Algorithms and 'Ancient Apocalypse' Popularity
00:01:12
Speaker
You know, we're not giving thanks for.
00:01:15
Speaker
Hey, trends in Netflix shows. yeah So if you haven't seen it or if you don't have Netflix. Or maybe you're boycotting it and if you are, good for you. Either way, the top Netflix has, depending on what app you're looking on and and how you're engaging with Netflix, we use Apple TV and most of them are similarly configured in some way or another. There's always a trending now, like a top 10 trending shows.
00:01:41
Speaker
Usually, it's stuff that like just came out because people want to see stuff in their FOMO and they just want to do it. But not always. Well, and Netflix uses that algorithm to push the shows they want you to watch too, for sure so yeah sure. Sure. But the trending is not what they want you to watch. The trending is what's happening now. what How many people are watching this and you know whether or not it's popular. so and And then, of course, once it gets on the training list, more people see it, more people watch it. It just perpetuates itself, which is terrible for certain shows.
Graham Hancock's Theories on Ancient Civilizations
00:02:09
Speaker
And yeah one of those is Ancient Apocalypse. It's an eight-episode series by Graham Hancock, who is popular from the
00:02:18
Speaker
Chariots of the Gods book that he wrote decades ago, which basically promoted ancient aliens as the source of, or at least ancient technology. I'm not sure if he actually said ancient aliens in that, but ancient technology being the source of inspiration for basically everything that happened after the Ice Age. So, you know agriculture and megalithic structures, pyramids, all kinds of stuff.
00:02:43
Speaker
These people couldn't possibly have come up with it on their own. They must have had help. yeah And this was the help. yeah So he's using this series to basically perpetuate that theory. But in a in what I feel like is a slightly new way as far as everybody finding this out. I mean, he's written many books about this and been vocal about it. So it's not new by any sense of the word.
Site Selection in 'Ancient Apocalypse'
00:03:01
Speaker
But it's new for the popular discourse in that his overarching theory here is that there was an ancient advanced civilization of humans that lived during the Ice Age, he doesn't have a theory at least that he proposes on this show of like when they started. No, no, very vague. The information about this ancient advanced civilization is super vague, just that it existed and that it passed its technology onto the prehistoric human cultures that we see around the world today. Around the world. Yeah, around the world. Yeah. So.
00:03:34
Speaker
so just Yeah, he didn't go to Australia, but he did. And not really South America either. he He was in North America, Mexico, the United States, and then over in Europe and in Turkey, but and in Indonesia, I think as well. But yeah, anyway, he definitely picked and chose the sites that he wanted to show in right as
Criticism of Hancock's Approach to Archaeology
00:03:55
Speaker
supporting his theory. Sure. Yeah.
00:03:56
Speaker
And let's be clear here, we're not saying don't go watch the show. It's not really going to do any good for us to say we caught this show. I mean, it's popular on Netflix. It's going to be popular on Netflix. yeah There's enough people who aren't scientifically minded, who are not archaeologists, who are not, you know, students or or fans of history and things like that that are just going to watch it because it's in the top 10 on Netflix. They're going to start watching it. So like I said, we're not going to have any impact at all by saying don't watch it. Yeah, no. And like, I don't think that's a good idea anyway, because the the worst thing that we can do as archaeologists and as people who are just interested in archaeology, depending on what your perspective is, is to shut down stuff like this. And when you shut it down, then you don't have the argument and the conversations that hopefully bring the true scientific theories to light rather than the pseudoscience, which is what he's proposing a lot of
Visual Presentation and Computer Graphics
00:04:45
Speaker
here. Yes.
00:04:46
Speaker
But we should talk about what we liked about the show. I mean, we didn't absolutely hate it, right? and there yeah There were things to like about it. I mean, like all, well, Netflix productions, but most yeah modern productions, yeah there is a lot of really great computer graphics. There are. And the reconstructions of these sites are so cool and so well done. right You don't get that kind of stuff on like a history channel show. I mean, kind of, but not to this level and not this good for sure. Yeah, the the visualizations of the geology that's happening, of the archaeology, like this's there's an episode, one of the later episodes that has Poverty Point in Louisiana on there. And one of the things, oh no, it's not Poverty Point, it's Serpent Mound they're talking about. Yeah, it's in the same episode though. Serpent Mound in Southern Ohio that
00:05:30
Speaker
it's It is really difficult to see Serpent Mound because it's surrounded by trees yeah and it's kind of in an arc shape. yeah And they strip away not only the trees around it, but they strip away the the grass and stuff that's grown on Serpent Mound and just show it as a dirt structure yeah as theoretically, you know, shortly after it would have been created. Right. Yeah.
00:05:51
Speaker
And what it would have looked like. Now, I don't know and don't know why there wouldn't have been any trees. I'm not really sure about that, like what the environment was like. They didn't really get into that. But why wouldn't have but had trees around it? Yeah, like this show, there's a lot of speculation. like There's speculation about a lot of things throughout the show. And that that was one of them. That may not be speculation. That may just be something that was unspoken about you know in the show directly.
Hancock's Inconsistencies with Archaeological Evidence
00:06:13
Speaker
Maybe it was edited out. But there could have been something about the paleo environment to that area that There weren't as many trees. Yeah, it was post glacial. Things were changing, you know, so, you know, or at least they say it was post glacial and when it was created current. I mean, not to get too far into it, but current evidence puts that one, you know, a little over a thousand to maybe 2000 years old, but they take it all the way back to about 10,000 years old. So 10,000 years ago is when they would have done the reconstruction for and there may not have been a lot of trees in this post glacial environment. Yeah, so definitely. But Either way, they made it so that through the graphics and the reconstruction, they made it so that you can get that visual of what it would have looked like so much better than if you just look at even aerial photographs of it today. So I i really did like how they how they did that for all the sites that they visited. It was really cool, really well done.
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, and that leads to the other thing that's kind of what we liked and that's true about this.
Focus on Lesser-Known Archaeological Sites
00:07:08
Speaker
It's just it's hard it's hard to suss out really fact from fiction or speculation. And the thing we both noted was that it seems like, I mean, probably 80 to 90 percent of what's said in this series is real. And yeah, they do a really good job of showing you the site, explaining what is the current accepted theory about the site, because archaeology is built on theories, because we don't know for sure what these people were doing and why. All we can do is theorize. And he he does do a good job of of presenting that before he goes off into crazy land and starts talking about you know ancient societies and floods and things like that, which we'll we'll get into. yeah
00:07:48
Speaker
The other thing I really, really liked is that almost all the sites that they choose to focus on are not sites that are typically thought of in the mainstream media for archeology. you know there There was no Stonehenge. They didn't focus on Stonehenge or the pyramids in Giza. They might've been mentioned in passing, but they weren't yeah focused on. All these sites are like lesser known. And I love putting the spotlight on something that maybe people don't know a lot about, but it's still really cool and and really worth knowing about. So I like that about the show as well.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yeah, that's really cool. So, you know, and he does he does physically go to all these to his credit. You know, there's very try to write. Well, he went there. Yeah. So they locked him out and would. Yeah, they wouldn't let him in. But they let him in. But he where he wasn't allowed to film there. Exactly. Yeah. So they instead they filmed adjacent to there and got drone footage. Uh huh. So yeah. Yeah. That was a little bit a little bit. Probably a little shady. But yeah. and But anyway, they talked to the property owner that owns the property next to
Depiction of Archaeologists in the Series
00:08:46
Speaker
Serpent Mound. And this guy's the head of a group called Friends of... What is it? It's not Friends of Serpent Mound. It's like Friends of the Mound Builders or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Because they they support...
00:08:57
Speaker
I guess preservation and historical interpretation of lots of mount sites. But it sounded like a little bit more alternative theory rather than mainstream. It sounded like they're really open to it. Not academic for sure. Yeah, either way, it's a group of interested people that are trying to, I guess, preserve these things. And there are people that go around buying up properties next to places like this for whatever reason, just to I don't know. I don't know what the reason is. I don't i didn't get the impression the guy actually lives there. Maybe he does. I didn't either. And he didn't seem like it was like some old school farmer that had been there and his family had been there forever and ever. It was somebody who bought that property because they wanted to be near to Serpent Mountain. So yeah. So the biggest thing that and our biggest takeaway, just to get this out in segment one, for those of you that may not listen to the whole show,
00:09:46
Speaker
The biggest thing that we caution in throughout this whole thing and that we didn't, you know, I wouldn't say we didn't like, we weren't like offended by it, but it's the absolute dismissal of archaeologists in one breath, but then the acceptance of archaeological theory in another breath.
Debate in Archaeology
00:10:00
Speaker
Yeah. Like he'll say, archaeologists discovered decades ago or, or you know, during an excavation that this happened. Great. He's accepting that. Yeah. Then he goes, archaeologists completely dismiss the idea and and completely won't even think about adding this to their story. Yeah, it's like he's totally okay with archeology and archeologists methods when it suits his theories, but he's completely dismissive of the theories and conclusions that come from the, the excavation. So right you can't have one without the other. And I don't know. I, I would do that. It just felt like a, an attack on archeologists all throughout the show. It was, It just the whole time just archaeologists dismiss this archaeologists don't like this and it's like we don't there's not that many feelings from archaeologists about Theories it's like there's evidence and there's not evidence and you you know you try to fall on the side of what there's evidence for and Yeah, he says throughout that archaeologists refuse to do this and archaeologists refuse to accept that. First off, yeah he's lumping all archaeologists in together as a group of people. Right. Which is not true. Not true. There's actually a lot of arguments amongst the archaeological community about lots of things. There probably are individual archaeologists that refuse to accept certain theories. There's archaeology. There's fights amongst well qualified archaeologists about current theories today. Yeah. They don't agree. It's debate, it's healthy, healthy debate about all of these different theories. And it it will be, it that's just how it is in academic community. So there is always going to be argument and disagreement.
Joe Rogan's Role in Hancock's Series
00:11:35
Speaker
There's not one body who, well, maybe there is kind of one body who disagrees with Graham Hancock.
00:11:42
Speaker
Along these lines, you know archaeologists have, way he he says throughout that archaeologists have ah you know stuck to their narrative. He always says the narrative of history, this one story. In fact, in the last episode, he brings back on Joe Rogan, who is who the interview is the interview he did with Joe Rogan a few years ago is is segmented on, I think, episode one. yeah And the you see clips from that. But Joe Rogan actually comes onto the show yeah in the last episode.
00:12:08
Speaker
which I don't know who the actual hell is Joe Rogan to be on this show. I know, why would he have anything to add to this conversation at all? To sheer crazy that Joe Rogan has had on his show should tell you that he doesn't lend any credibility to this show. No, he will entertain any theory about anything. So you shouldn't believe anything that guy says. And he's probably doing it while he's high. Anyway, the thing is, the thing that he says is, you know, archaeologists are sticking to this narrative and they refuse to budge from this established narrative. And again, like I said, that might be true for some archaeologists. Archaeologists build their careers, especially older ones, on certain theories. And it's really difficult for them to come away from these theories because of the line of evidence that they've accepted.
00:12:54
Speaker
you know The thing is, if you look just back through archeological textbooks and and current thinking in archeology, things change all the time. As we find new things, we come up with new dating techniques to redate old sites, to reinterpret older sites, things that have been found. And one thing Graham Hackock points out, which I totally believe him in, is don't always believe
Challenges in Updating Historical Site Signage
00:13:15
Speaker
the signpost that's at an archeological site or a roadside attraction because those things do not change very often. much be out of date. Those are very out of date. It takes like state funding to change them. And it's just, it's just not going to, yeah, it's not going to happen when, you know, a new paper comes out that says, Oh, now we believe this. Nobody's going to go say we have to go change the sign. The only place that might be true is national parks. Yeah. You know, national, maybe even state parks, but the like roadside attractions and the privately owned, um, privately maintained places like serpent mountain and stuff like that is, um,
00:13:49
Speaker
you know, probably not going to change anytime soon, and unless they just got there. They'll need a lot of evidence to change whatever the current theory is about why something is the way it is. So for sure. Let's take a break. And on the other side, we're going to come back and talk about some of the episodes and some of the stuff in the episode. So we'll do that on the other side back in a minute.
00:14:07
Speaker
Welcome back to the archaeology show episode 195, the ancient apocalypse edition. And we're going to talk now, you know, we took some, we took some notes as we were going throughout just some things that were said, some things about some of these episodes. This, the point of this episode is not necessarily to you know tell you the real history behind all these, that would really, really take more than one episode for every single one of these sites. Yeah, every site is well-documented and could be its own episode or at least segment of our show. So we we didn't do that kind of deep dive research on these sites. Right.
00:14:39
Speaker
We could, maybe in the future. But we didn't do that for this episode today. But like I said, it would be at least one episode for every site of really intense research. And our point is to just kind of get the word out about this series and why you should be skeptical about some of the claims within it. Totally.
Pre-Clovis Evidence and Archaeological Acceptance
00:14:55
Speaker
Anyway, one of the things he definitely does say in episode one is talking about North American prehistory. And this is really just kind of an old trope that is changing quite a bit. But, you know, when you look at pre-Clovis sites and Clovis was for a really long time thought of as the oldest civilization across North America and possibly even in South America. and
00:15:19
Speaker
because the And it's all based on this one projectile point that was found that is very unique, um very stylistically, again, unique and uniform across the continent. And I got a lot to say about that too. But it's very unique and uniform across the continent. And it's found at similar depths and similar ages across the continent as well. And it was became to be known as the Clovis Culture because of where it was found in Clovis, New Mexico the first time. The site was called Blackwater Draw.
00:15:46
Speaker
And that's where the first Clovis point was found and named. So, and that was back like, I don't even know when. Was it the thirties? Was it that early? It might've been. maybe yeah know It was a long time ago. It was a long time ago. Yeah. But anyways, similar points have been found across the continent. And so they're like, well, this is like the oldest culture that we know of. But since then, and it took a long time for this for archaeologists to really accept this, but since then,
00:16:09
Speaker
other stuff has been found that dates to to before that. And and um um again, I don't have this in front of me, so I'm going off my memory, but I'm pretty sure like even in like Nevada, the Great Basin, the Western STEM tradition, I think predates Clovis. i think it Yeah. In some cases I think it might. Yeah. And and there's other stuff across the continent now that predate Clovis. Now you've got other sites too with slightly slightly less solid claims that predate Clovis by a lot. I mean, going back at least 20,000 years from really solid stuff, going back about 14,000 Clovis was around 10 to 12,000 years ago. But going back even farther than that, we've got sites in Oregon that were 14,000. We've got other stuff and and those are becoming well more accepted. But then you've got stuff that's like 20,000, 30,000. Which we we talked about not too long ago, like the footprints.
00:16:59
Speaker
New Mexico. Yeah, the footprints in New Mexico, I think it was White Sands, right? Yeah, White Sands. Yeah. they I mean, they're pretty well dated to like 20 to 22,000 years ago or something like that. So, I mean, the dates are getting pushed back. And I think this is one of the things that Graham Hancock says in the series is that archaeologists are unwilling to accept the evidence of pre-Clovis and pre-ice age, I guess, societies and civilizations. and It's like, yeah, 20 years ago, that would have been accurate because I remember in college 10 years ago. Yeah, totally. And I remember I remember in college that like it was taught as this like fringe theory that there was very little evidence of and like to be very careful of archaeologists that were.
00:17:40
Speaker
you know, pushing that idea forward. But actually, it turns out that it is it does seem to be true. And I think most most archaeologists today accept that there was older than Clovis stuff going on in North America. So it happens. it change The change happens. It just you need a lot of evidence. And honestly, maybe you need the old guard to so to, you know, kind of fade away a little bit, too. And newer archaeologists to come in and and yeah accept it. And so well this goes this goes back to just basic science, too. It's You've got this idea that's written in the textbook and people are taught this idea and then a new thing comes around.
Migration Theories and Influence on North America
00:18:16
Speaker
You can't just rewrite the textbooks because of the new thing. Yeah. Because you don't know if this is a new one off kind of thing, depending on where it was found. ah I mean, it might be, should be noted that a lot of these, these really old sites are found in coastal areas. And I mean, you don't hear this theory talked about too much, but
00:18:34
Speaker
There's nothing saying that people didn't periodically end up in North America. It just wasn't the ones that stuck. yeah you know the The people that came here stayed here and and and you know populated and then survived. and then just you know I'm not saying there was like a North American Adam and Eve, but there were cultures that came here at certain times, possibly multiple times and then kind of met in the middle sort of thing. yeah you know There could have been multiple migrations in. There didn't necessarily have to be one migration into North America. and the Of those multiple migrations, some of them may not have lasted. They might not have made it. There may have been somebody that got here 130,000 years ago and butchered a mastodon in San Diego. you know I'm not saying that there's a lot of good evidence for that, but I'm also saying that
00:19:18
Speaker
That's not impossible. That is not impossible. And maybe they just didn't make it. You know, maybe the Ice Age killed them off, who knows? But maybe for whatever reason, they got here and didn't make it. There were boatloads of people that came from England and Spain and France that also died when they got here, completely wiped out. Well, we have a really great example in the Vikings. We know for sure that they made it here and and Oh, we all speak Danish? Didn't make it. No. they didn't you know They went back. They didn't make it. So yeah you know it's it's definitely possible. i mean There's just not a lot of evidence for it. So when you don't have evidence, it's hard to to build a theory on it. But it is accepted that the Vikings got here. that one is Yes, that is accepted. That's for sure. It's the other things like the Serene Mastodon site that you mentioned. like that There's just not a lot of evidence for it. And when you don't have the evidence, it's hard to have a theory.
00:20:09
Speaker
But Graham Hancock excels at creating a theory without a lot of evidence. He lives in the spaces where it's it's like, well, maybe this could have happened. Yeah. And he accepts the heat. What he's trying to do is he came up with this. He probably had this thought a long time ago. And trust me, I am one of the first people that would jump on the bandwagon to say I'd love this to be true, because I love the thought of.
00:20:33
Speaker
You know, I love the thought of like an ancient, technologically advanced civilization. I love the thought of ancient aliens. You know why? Because it proves that aliens exist. It would be cool. I would love to know right now that aliens exist, you know, and if they did. I mean, there's nothing saying that if there's other beings that are technologically advanced and space faring in this in this galaxy that we live in.
00:20:54
Speaker
who the it's It's unlikely that either A, they could yeah actually get here. astromer A lot of the stromers say that because with i mean they'd have to have technology we can't even conceive of to just get here in time. But also, they could have already died out, or or they could be just developing now, right? But they could have there could have been multiple space-faring civilizations that lived and died and are now extinct over the last billions of years, 14 billion years. You just want Star Trek to be true. I'm just saying. You want the Vulcans to show up and like, you know, induct us into the Federation. see that's The whole premise of Star Trek is actually flawed because these yeah these humanoid beings getting to the spacefaring stage of of of reality within the same thousand year span is so unlikely. Oh yeah, totally. Yeah, it's so unlikely. Yeah. Yeah. Why not? Why not a billion years ago? Star Trek could have been true. I more believe Battlestar Galactica, where they had spacefaring civilizations 200,000 years ago from our timeline, you know? So
Criticism of Hancock's Evidence Fitting
00:21:50
Speaker
anyway, Yeah. Point ta point is I'd love all that to be true. And what Graham Hancock does is he says, I believe this to be true, not not I know it to be true. I believe this to be true. And then he tries to take every single thing and say, this fits my theory yeah because of this one little aspect of it. yeah And it's like the thing where it says, you know, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. right That's your only tool. Yeah. And it's ah it's crazy. And that's
00:22:20
Speaker
You know, if he would just say, well, you know, this is this is there's there's a low probability, but this could be true. But he looks at all these sites and then puts all this information together and says, this must be the reason for it.
00:22:32
Speaker
Yeah, like an example of that is in episode two in Cholula, Mexico. He is looking at this pyramid there. I think he looked at a couple places in Mexico and they all have these pyramid structures, right? And then there's pyramids in Egypt and and in many other places around the world. Pyramid is is the structure, a shape that exists in so many different places. And he's like,
00:22:55
Speaker
Cool. That must have come from a lost older parent civilization because otherwise how could all of these different people have independently come up with this shape? Right. And we know that that did happen in so many ways across the world with different, not just pyramids, but all kinds of different technologies were developed independently. But Graham Hancock doesn't want that to have happened independently. It fits his theory for them to have come from somebody before them who passed that knowledge um onto them. And because he wants it to be that way, he just presents it as the like actual scientific right evidence for his theory. It's not true.
00:23:34
Speaker
No. And one of the things he says in that episode as well was the quote that we wrote down was, perhaps what's sadly lacking in archaeology is an archaeology of ideas. You didn't do it with a British accent. I can't. That was my British accent. Was that your British accent? Yeah, that was it. Oh, and he's so earnest when he says it too. like like He's trying to help us with like our our ideas. We just don't have them. <unk>m I'm not going to say the next thing I wrote in my notes, but I was pretty upset about that quote. I didn't like it very much. I'll censor it just a little bit, but Rachel literally wrote down F right off, Graham Hancock. Did I say Graham or did I say garbage? Oh, garbage Hancock. Right. Nice. Gotcha. Gotcha. I was trying to rein in my anger because I really don't want this episode to be just like a just a slamming Graham Hancock over and over again because that doesn't do anybody any good. We need to take what he said and like really dissect it into pieces and look at what he's trying to say and just debunk it piece by piece rather than just slamming him as a human because that doesn't help anybody.
00:24:33
Speaker
Yeah, another thing he mentions in this episode is the civilizing hero that he mentions, which he actually brings around.
Mythological Elements in Hancock's Theories
00:24:40
Speaker
what What he does throughout all these episodes and he brings it together in the final episodes is actually a kind of a masterful masterful piece of writing. It really was. yeah He doesn't tell you he's doing this, which is great because it makes you think, oh, my God, I've got this revelation watching episode eight. And but he talks about he He brings up in different ways the same ideas and all these different sides, which of course is the ah foundation of his theory is that all these people we' were given this information. It was inherited knowledge and it's the same inherited knowledge across the planet. But one of the common facets of this, and if you're watching this for the first time after listening to this show, look for this because he doesn't exactly say it every time. He doesn't. He builds the theory as he goes for sure. Yeah. But in each one, there's the same idea that um in their in their creation or founding myths that a a person or God or giant or some sort of fantastical entity shows up at some point after a catastrophe and says, here's how you rebuild civilization. Yeah, he called he calls them the civilizing hero. Yeah. And and this person or this God or whatever, in the case of Cholula in Mexico, it was Quetzalcoatl, who's the feathered serpent. He showed up in a boat with this knowledge of how to build monumental structures, basically, and how to progress their society after this catastrophic event happened, which is another thing he builds throughout the
00:26:01
Speaker
The series is the whole catastrophic flood event thing. He keeps he keeps bringing up these myths of floods, which there are so many of them throughout history. right All civilizations have flood myths. And I can only imagine it's because they lived near rivers and flooding was a thing. And one small river of flooding would have felt catastrophic to them. So, you know,
00:26:24
Speaker
your legends get built around that, right? and That's true. And depending on where these places exist and a lot of them do exist, this is why there's nothing from the southern half of the globe in this because the ice age didn't really impact the southern half of the globe in a way that didn't impact the northern half. True. Yeah. So that's why none of none of the structures that support his theory are actually south of the equator. That even realize that. That's totally true.
00:26:48
Speaker
and and And again, the reason for that is these flood myths could be perpetuated by the the chaotic melting of the ice caps, or not the ice caps, the ice sheets hu that that were on North America and Europe during this time. and when needed a lot of water Created a lot of water. When that melting happened, it created these big inland seas, these big lakes. It created you know outflow events that were catastrophic. It created all these kinds of things. and these You know, rightly so. These people living at that time, which we know there were people living at that time, they would have really had to deal with that. Yeah. And they'd have to come up with reasons for why this happened. And it's just like, you know, your popular ancient Greek and Roman myths where, you know, oh, you know, my fields aren't going to grow very well unless I pray to Zeus. And if I don't, I'm not going to get the rain, you know, and ah and maybe if if Zeus gets really mad, though, he's going to send lightning to. Yeah. You know, Zeus is known for lightning. I mean, that's
00:27:41
Speaker
It's just well known, yeah you know, and these mythologies and these religions are built out of this, this nature and agricultural way of life because they just didn't understand a lot about what was going around on around them and how and why things were happening. And so they came up with these myths and these theories to explain that same thing. Ryan Hackock has done. Yeah, so definitely. Oh, it is. It's like, yeah, it's exactly like that. Yeah. He doesn't understand it. So he's come up with this fantastical reason for it. Yeah. you know his own mythology I mean this is I mean i'm I'm not you know this isn't trying to disparage any sort of religion but all religions are based on the fact that you don't know how something happens therefore dot dot dot deity right and we've kind of distilled it all down to
00:28:26
Speaker
the The one remaining thing that is the but not one, we know a lot of we don't know a lot of why, what things how things happen, but the one big thing we still don't really understand is death. We don't want to understand it, we're afraid of it, yeah and it's the basis basis, the absolute basis for every single religion on the planet right now is when you die,
Hancock's Dissatisfaction with Mainstream Archaeology
00:28:45
Speaker
you're going here. yeah And we don't want to think that when we die, we're not going anywhere. yeah That is scary and frightening to think that you lived your whole entire life or that you're your parent just died or your kid just died or your dog just died. yeah And it's really hard to fathom that they're just done. yeah So we invent this thing to say that they're not done. And that's exactly what Graham Hancock is doing right here is he's inventing this thing that fits his theory because he doesn't like
00:29:12
Speaker
where everything else came from. He doesn't like how it happened. yeah So anyway, there's a lot of other stuff to talk about in these episodes, and we're going to get to some of that in this probably slightly longer segment three, and then our sum up theories of, or ideas, I guess, of this ah this whole series. So back in a minute. Welcome back to the idiotic ideas show, ah episode 194.
00:29:35
Speaker
It's not even episode 194. It's episode 195. It is. Wow. yeah That's how idiotic this is. It's literally written right in front of you. in multiple places. I was looking right at it, and I said, we're 94. Anyway, 195. Yep, 195. And we're talking about the series, Ancient Apocalypse, currently, unfortunately, popular on Netflix, because not enough of you listeners right now are sharing these episodes to your friends and family yeah so they can hear this stuff and then not watch that on, you know. Yeah. I will say, though, I did a quick search on Google just to see like what the world is saying about the show, not what Netflix is saying
Public Perception and Critical Reception of 'Ancient Apocalypse'
00:30:09
Speaker
about it. And all the top articles are like,
00:30:12
Speaker
Is this like what? yeah did Is this the worst thing on Netflix ever? Yes, yes it is. So but that there's a lot of criticism. And it makes it more popular. That's true. It does make people watch it. I'm still okay with people watching it though, because there's good information in there. You just have to be really, really skeptical of the conclusions, conclusions that are being drawn, yeah especially about things related to ancient myths right and ancient lost civilizations that we have no evidence for and archaeo astronomy. So speaking of archaeo astronomy.
Archaeoastronomy in Malta
00:30:45
Speaker
Speaking of episode three and a bunch of episodes after that. Yes.
00:30:49
Speaker
really talk about archaeoastronomy. They do. And episode three is about Malta. and and Giganta? Yeah, Malta is a small island off the coast of Sicily, and ah which is off Italy. yeah And like ah like a lot of places, first off, a lot of these coastal areas were Walkable like you could get to them pretty yeah easily like all of Indonesia Yeah all that stuff was walkable because during During the last ice age and close to the end of the last ice age a lot of these places You know the the sea levels were a hundred to two hundred feet lower if not more in some places Yeah, they were peninsulas not islands basically so people were easily able to get there mountain tops. Yeah stuff like that so um anyway
00:31:31
Speaker
so So access to these was was easier than it is now. And there are these huge megalithic structures on a site called Gigantia on Malta. And it dates to, they say, around 7,000 years old using the relative dating of artifacts. Now, Graham Hancock thinks that ah you know these are actually much older. yeah And those artifacts were just dropped there by later civilizations, which actually I think could actually be true in some cases. It could be, but like he didn't discuss the context of the artifacts at all in the episode. So like context is really key when you're using that as your dating method. You need to know where they're found and and the geological context is actually really important. And he doesn't talk about that at all. But like here's the thing. You do have to realize and i'm by you, I mean, people listening to this have to realize that, you know, in archaeology, you really just
00:32:20
Speaker
you you can't always assume that things are in association with each other you can with a like a buried site that's usually okay you know we're gonna say that this this old buried site that's really just harves a few hearts and some projectile points those are more than likely all associated with each other so if you can date the hearth through carbon dating or other means, then you can more than likely date the stuff around it. And we start when we start assembling those pieces of evidence across the world, then we we we generally know them to be true. right um But if you have a megalithic structure, like let's say Stonehenge, Stonehenge has been around for 5,000 years plus.
00:32:54
Speaker
There have been people, there are people every year that visit Stonehenge. There are millions of people every year that visit Stonehenge. Who knows what they're dropping on the ground? yeah The people who manage it clean it up. But you know back in the day, that wasn't so easy and and it it wasn't done all the time. So there's there's different cultures and different things that visit these structures that are very obvious and very visible on the landscape. Yeah, and they would have been used by later peoples also, probably. So, it I mean, it is valid to say that you know it could have been dropped by a later culture. But if the oldest thing that you're finding is 7,000 years, and the artifacts also date to that, then like it's a pretty solid idea that it that is the oldest occupation of that site. They are the ones who created that site. but Yeah, if all of our civilization was wiped out today, and then somebody 100 years from now descended upon the planet and said, look at all these things. And they went to the Empire State Building and saw that there were flat screen modern computers in the Empire State Building, internet wired throughout. And they knew that internet didn't become ubiquitous in this country until the 90s.
00:33:53
Speaker
then they might think that the the Empire State Building was built in the 1990s, because look what it's wired for. Look what it has. It's got all these modern things. When in reality, the Empire State Building was built in the 30s, and they would have to dig deep into the structure of it to see to find that that that you know could possibly be true. yeah know um So looking at stuff like, you know, Gobekka Tepe was eventually buried. Malta was eventually buried um just through time, although Malta, I think they said, was intentionally buried.
00:34:20
Speaker
Yeah, it looks like some of it was, yeah potentially, yeah. But the point is, these structures were around for potentially thousands of years and other people could have dropped stuff there. So that's not wrong. yeah But he he points out with Malta, going back to archaeoastronomy, that the orientations of these structures point towards the star Sirius. And the star Sirius' orientation, because of the movement of our solar system in the galaxy has actually changed the position. its It's continuously moving and not perceptibly, but over periods of thousands of years, it's moving. yeah and The orientation of these structures move to orient themselves towards Sirius.
00:34:56
Speaker
Yeah, i that just feels like ah a bit of a stretch as far as theories go though. I don't know, it could be true. It could be, but like the researcher, so he had on a researcher who was talking about this specifically and she was saying that she she systematically went through all the stars until she found one that all of them could have been oriented to. And I'm like, that just feels like you're really forcing what you're looking at to fit the theory that you want it to fit. You might think that because there's lots of stars, but Sirius in the prehistoric night sky, and if you've ever have been really right yeah yeah if you've ever been to a dark sky environment, Sirius is one of the brightest stars in the sky. yeah So it's it's prominent. and It's possible that this is accurate, but I just think that the orientation, the way they are, there could have been another reason for why all these structures are oriented in many different directions.
00:35:45
Speaker
And ah so, again, I like with theory, you just you can theorize, but you can't say for sure that that's what's going on. but the The problem with this, though, is that Graham Hancock says throughout the remainder of the series that archaeologists choose to ignore the astronomical evidence. He even says during the Poverty Point Serpent Mount episode.
00:36:05
Speaker
which I think was six or seven that that archaeologists are not trained in astronomy. They don't understand astronomy. That is the such a bullshit thing to say is because so wrong. Archaeologists aren't also necessarily trained in geology. We're not train in nuclear physics yet. We have carbon dating. yeah We're not trained in all these kinds of things. We're trained in theory, archaeological theory. We're trained in archaeological methods. And once you become an archaeologist, if you do not embrace these other disciplines and bring in these specialists, we've worked on almost every single excavation we've worked on together. There have been geologists, people with like paleoethnobotany and biology and all these different specialists that come in.
00:36:45
Speaker
And they they bring these ideas because you're right. People aren't cross-trained a lot. you know Your primary discipline includes a lot of theory in your primary discipline, but you have to bring in these specialists. yeah When I worked in Olavai Gorge in Africa,
00:36:59
Speaker
There's a project that I think might even still be ongoing, I'm not really sure, but it was run by Rutgers University called the OLAP project. It was the Olduvai Landscape Paleoanthropology Project. And what they were trying to do was look at slices of time and not just look at the human and hominid prehistory of that of the depth, but they were looking at the linear landscape and what was going on in total. And they had PhDs and grad students from 10, 15 different disciplines looking at this stuff. yeah Because no one paleoanthropologist, which is basically ah you know a no one person could know all these things. right So we're constantly bringing in all this stuff. Now, despite all that, there's an entire field called archaeoastronomy. There is. Archaeologists looking for astronomical alignments and evidence on the Earth in archaeological yeah sites. Absolutely. It's just ridiculous to say that archaeologists are dismissing this entire sub discipline of, of archeology. Like it's it's a thing and it's there. And when it's not being assigned or, yeah or used on a site, it's probably because the evidence isn't, isn't there for it. There's not a lot of evidence that there was a heavy focus on astronomy at that site. And that's why it's not being included. So, but to say that we just dismiss it, like that's absolutely ridiculous. Yeah.
00:38:17
Speaker
And speaking of things that archaeologists dismiss, we're going to just gloss over this really quickly because it's almost not even worth talking about. But episode four is about the Bimini Road and Atlantis.
Debunked Theories and Atlantis
00:38:30
Speaker
And this is a supposedly manmade road that is under the sea in Bimini or off the coast of Bimini.
00:38:41
Speaker
And it looks really compelling when you look at it. It looks like there are parallel like lines of stone that are erode. But it's been fully debunked by researchers in the 80s. There was a published research ah publish paper on how it's not actually erode.
00:39:01
Speaker
Oh man, he's talking about it being Atlantis and it's just... Right, and they get these divers to go over there to look at it. Not geologists, no you know, they're divers and they have side-sanding sonar and they they put detailed maps and these guys just can't possibly conceive of the fact that nature could create um these blocks of uniform size. You know, it's not very probable around the planet, doesn't happen all the time. it doesn't happen a lot. But then, but then you look at like the Giants Causeway in, I think it's Ireland and you look at devil's ah postpile oh yeah post pile. Yeah. Or in California. Yeah. By mammoth, I think we've been there. It's yeah highway three 95. Yeah. You look at these things and there's this, and even in episode one of Graham Hancock series, there's these hexagonal basalt formations. and they build this structure out of them, and modern people are still building structures out of these things. They're these columnar basalt it's called. They're hexagonal in shape, but nature's creating perfect hexagons. How is it doing that? How could that possibly be? yeah you know What about the giant quartz crystals that are found in caves in, I think, South America and other places, you know deep down below the Earth's crust, these massive quartz crystals that are of uniform size and shape. Nature is fully capable of producing precise geometry. not all the time, but it definitely happens. Definitely possible. yeah Yeah. And the only, his only reason for bringing this entire Atlantis Bimini Road thing in is well, A, to help promote the theory of Atlantis, which was supposed to be an advanced civilization was buried by water. Although he's not, it's the only time he brings up Atlantis throughout the whole thing. Yeah, he talks about it a couple times, but he wasn't really focusing on it in this series. And again, the only reason he brings this up is because, you know, nobody could have possibly had roads 10,000 years ago. So, you know, this is evidence that it was inherited information. Yeah. And he also is talking about how archaeologists
00:40:51
Speaker
dis not dismissed, but aren't putting enough effort into looking for underwater sites, too, I think is part of what he's talking about here, because this is definitely fully underwater. And again, whole discipline of underwater archaeology. It's just hard, right? It's hard to to excavate underwater. It's hard to do it. Well, the qualifications of being able to dive and do that are steep.
00:41:11
Speaker
It's just, it's just a lot. So there's not as much research going on because it's hard. So, but there's no dismissal of it though. Graham Hancock, we're not dismissing anything. We know that the, the seas have been rising for the last 10, 15,000 years and that there's plenty of archeological sites under the water. yeah It's just, we can't get to them.
Post-Ice Age Advances and Gobekli Tepe
00:41:30
Speaker
There's a number of sites in Turkey that he talks about. One of them is ah a now famous site of Gobekli Tepe. And it's an 11,000 year old site that, again, has some very unique geometry to it. There's the standing T-shaped stones that you know have some stuff on them. There's imageries of, again, serpents, which we've mentioned before, yeah carved into the stone. but a lot of the same ideas he's bringing throughout these different episodes is that this stuff, like they, he basically says they weren't doing this kind of monumental megalithic architecture previous to the ice age. They may have been doing it during the ice age, but we don't have evidence of it because it was ice everywhere.
00:42:09
Speaker
And then suddenly, at the end of the Ice Age, all this stuff happens. They're they're able to build these things. And in this in this area of Turkey, when you're close to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which join up to to dump into the red sea the Red Sea, I don't know, somewhere around there. yeah This is what's known as the fertile crescent because of these two rivers and their annual floodings and all that stuff. It was a very fertile area. And that's where it's commonly believed that agriculture was first basically developed in the world. Now it was independently developed in other places as well, but not that not earlier than that. Right.
00:42:41
Speaker
So you've got agriculture developed right there. And all of a sudden he says, he literally says all of a sudden agriculture, monumental design. And the only reason that could have happened is because it was inherited knowledge. They were taught that they were taught how to grow things. They were yeah taught how to build these things. yeah And yet with all their carving, with all of their monumental architecture and all these like, oh, I saw a comet. So I'm going to draw snakes all over the rocks, you know, with all of their symbolism and trying to explain what they don't understand on the rocks.
00:43:11
Speaker
Why didn't they ever depict the ancient civilization that gave them this information? They would have revered them as gods. Yeah, totally. That's a very good point. But they never do that. That's not discussed once in here. It's just like this information came from nowhere. The people that got the information chose to ignore the fact that it came from somewhere and instead made snakes and comets. Yeah. It's like, what are you talking about? It doesn't make any sense when you look at it from that perspective. So yeah. And it, and he, he does say in one of the episodes, he's like, I'm not saying that the ancient peoples weren't smart enough to come up with these ideas on their own, but I am. He had some reason for why he's not saying that but like actually what he did is spend eight episodes Explaining why they weren't smart enough to come up with this on the realm. So it's just so dismissive of The ingenuity of ancient societies around the world. It's it it's just insulting really yeah one of One of the things I thought was interesting is, at the again, at the Serpent Mound site, episode six is what it was. I said a wrong episode earlier, but episode six was Poverty Point Serpent Mound. It's in our own notes, which I didn't look at. yeah There's a lot of notes. We had a lot of things to say about this show. right but one of his
00:44:26
Speaker
proofs, so to speak. That serpent mound dates back to prior to the earliest date that we have is apparently 321 BCE, which I don't know how
Speculation on Serpent Mound's Age and Alignment
00:44:35
Speaker
it's so specific. Usually there's an error range there, but 321. He didn't make that up. That that comes from evidence. yeah There was other dating that came back about a thousand years and then more recent dating has come back about 321 BCE. Now,
00:44:49
Speaker
Again, he's not wrong in this, but he thinks that that's a date of a reconstruction, like a refurbishment of Serpent Mound. Right. People throughout the last 12,000 years have collectively said, let's take care of this thing. We can't even collectively take care of our own historic structures. But for 12,000 years, Native Americans said, let's take care of Serpent Mound. Right. And they didn't let trees grow on it. They didn't let anything. They kept building it up. Yeah. And it's just like, yeah, they all had the same vision. Yeah, it stopped it from eroding away, like maintained it. Yeah, for sure. So there's that. Yeah. But then also,
00:45:18
Speaker
his reasoning for saying that this also is inherited knowledge of ancient astronomy and these building techniques and basically a lesson to the future is the head of the snake, which is eating a sun or an oval shaped structure, which is interpreted as the sun. I don't know why it would be an oval. The sun is clearly round, but anyway, yeah it's an oval stage structure that looks more like an egg to me. yeah Snakes eat eggs all the time.
00:45:42
Speaker
yeah But it's oriented towards the sun at one of the solstices, right? um i think it's I think it's oriented to the west for the setting sun, but I can't remember which solstice. I can't remember which one they said, yeah. Either way, a solstice, right? Yeah. so When it's oriented there, it's actually about two degrees off. And two degrees, if you're just looking at the skyline, is not that much. like You really need some precise measurements to know that it's two degrees off. yeah And so what he did, and you can actually use an app like the Starwalk app that I have on my iPhone to roll back time as far as you want to go because
00:46:16
Speaker
the position of the stars and planets and and all the stuff in the sky is easily predictable back an infinite amount of time. Right. Because we know about it. We know where it's going to be. If you want to see what the sky looked like where you're standing there right now a thousand years ago, just roll Starwalk back. You know, it's a pretty cool thing to do. Yeah. And as our solar system moves through the galaxy, because we are rotating around in the Milky Way galaxy then and we're also bobbing up and down within the spiral arms on a sine wave,
00:46:45
Speaker
our view of the stars changes right through time so what he did was basically said okay so where was the solstice you know because the earth also wobbles a little bit so where was the solstice aligned with the head of the serpent right and he walked that back our researchers walked that back and it was about 10 000 years ago no which 12 800 years ago 10 000 bc yeah yeah yeah so I can always mix that up. I know. But exactly fitting his theory. Exactly fits his theory, which is so annoying that it happens to fit his theory. And I'm like, you had to walk back 12,000 years to go two degrees? Yeah. So if they were one degree off 6,000 years ago, would they have noticed that? Yeah. If they were a half a degree off 3,000 years ago, would they have noticed that? Mm-hmm. And if they were less than less than one and a half degrees off, or a little more than one and a half degrees off, if we're projecting this as linear,
00:47:38
Speaker
2,000 years ago, when the yeah or 2,500 years ago when this was proposedly built, would they have noticed that? I know. That's such a small difference. And these people don't have sophisticated equipment. They're going on observation from a year or two years or five years before while they're building this thing, because it would have taken months, years probably to build the full serpent mound. They could have waited till the end to do that one part that needed to line up properly, but like... But we're also not saying they weren't capable of doing this. Of course they were. They weren't capable of precision, but my kind of point is... Things like this are built from a religious standpoint, either to give power to somebody or to give power to the deities around them, right?
Practical vs. Ceremonial Orientations of Structures
00:48:22
Speaker
That's why these things are usually done. It wasn't built as a playground for the children. So, to be super cool though, like a loose track in the form of a serpent. But anyway, it wasn't built for those reasons. It was built for these ceremony and spiritual reasons. So, would two degrees even have mattered that much? Even if they did notice it, it still gets the point across. You know, you can't say that
00:48:45
Speaker
they would need to have been exactly 100% that precise. yeah that That thinking right there is 100% flawed. Yeah, for sure. It's still human. It's still human. Humans are flawed. yeah But he does say in that episode as well, this is where he he mentions that archaeologists should not train in astronomy. yeah He says astronomy is not in... Oh, he says something about astronomy being an intrusion into archaeology. Astronomy is not an intrusion into archaeology and it's it's ah it's a very accepted I guess, methodology to think of astronomy when you're thinking about the orientation of prehistoric structures. Now, we don't necessarily think of astronomy when we think of TB rings in Wyoming, right? Not necessarily, but they might have had the opening towards a particular orientation of the sun. It's entirely possible. I mean, you might you might want the opening ah towards the towards the east in the morning so you can you can be warmed by the sunrise. yeah For sure. Or more likely you might want the opening to the east to just because in the plains of Wyoming the wind is almost always coming from the west. Yeah. So maybe you don't want that blowing into your teepee, you know. There's a lot of practical reasons that you need to consider for why people would have built things in the orientation that they did. And I will say that it it is easy for archaeologists to jump to the
00:50:02
Speaker
the more ritual or symbolic reasons for why people did things. But you're right, it could have been as practical as like wind blocking. right yeah I think one last thing, because we really need to finish up this episode, that we'll mention is kind of going back to almost one of the last episodes, like episode eight, there's the what's called the channeled scab lands
Cataclysmic Events and Geological Theories
00:50:21
Speaker
in Washington. Yeah. And we actually, I actually first heard about this when we went to the Walla Walla, not Walla Walla, the Tri-Cities area in Washington and the Red Mountain wine district. Yeah. And a lot of people. Delicious wines, by the way. Delicious wines. Yeah. But the reason the wine is so good right there is because of the volcanic fertile nature of the soils. And one of the reasons one of the ways that is the accepted theory that that area got that way is from this the theories in this episode. And it's basically Giant Lake Missoula, which was the freshwater lake at the edge of the ice sheets, the the um Laurentian ice sheet in this particular case. There was two of them, the Cordillerian and the Laurentian, that covered North America.
00:51:01
Speaker
and The Lake Missoula was the freshwater outflow of the melting of that glacier, right? Right. And it was huge. Took up half of western Montana, yeah if not all of western Montana. Right. And when that, at some point, you know, and and this happens today and pretty much every river that ice is over, is an ice dam was created basically up in the mountains between Idaho and Montana. And that ice dam gave way and drained Lake Missoula. I mean, not drained it completely, but drained a lot of the water out of Lake Missoula. And then the theory goes that as ice was melting, the lake filled back up again and then, you know, more ice clogged up this hole.
00:51:40
Speaker
I just thought of something. I'll bring it up in a second. But more ice clogged up this hole. And that happened many, many times as the ice sheets were melting and receding. right And what that did was carved out this area and brought all this you know material from the mountains down into these plains, and but also carved out these huge canyons. So all that's accepted. The fringe on this is that he brought in an amateur ah geologist. It's always an amateur. who His title under the show is Catastrophist. Yeah.
00:52:06
Speaker
um So definitely believe anything that guy says. This guy, I think it took a few weeks. It was one event that caused this, which fits Graham Hancock's theory of cataclysmic events across the planet happening simultaneously to wipe out this yeah ancient people right and then, you know, have them. Yeah. That's why there's no evidence left for them. They're saying there's evidence that it happened in one shot. Right. Now, my question is, I didn't think about this till just now. If you've got this what would have to be a relatively small area where the ice dam was and they're not disputing that there was an ice dam, they're just saying it happened all at once. yeah they The thing I would wonder is where where's that ice dam and why wouldn't that have just been completely wiped out? If you were to manage to
00:52:47
Speaker
to destroy millions of cubic yards of material in the span of a couple of weeks, what would have happened to the edge of ancient Lake Azula? Why was that intact? Yeah, how is that still there? I don't know. That's that's a weird thing. let's See, there's just a lot wrong with that idea. And yeah and I think you said that it it really flies in the face of the accepted geological theory of uniformitarianism. right Which is essentially says that the geological processes we see happening around us today have persisted through time. yeah like Like science hasn't changed. Physics hasn't changed. know Geology hasn't changed. yeah There are catastrophic catastrophic events. Nobody's not saying that. right But you have to prove it. Yeah, so yeah for sure. like Volcanoes happen. Earthquakes happen. And those can be catastrophic, but they wouldn't... They're pretty obvious when they do. But they're obvious. Yeah, we see the evidence very clearly when that happens. yeah
00:53:35
Speaker
so So I think what we're coming down to here is, you know, this show has a lot of really cool
Exposure to Lesser-Known Sites and Reuse by Later Civilizations
00:53:41
Speaker
graphics. It's got a lot of really cool depictions of ancient sites. I'm really glad that it's exposing these sites like Rachel said early on that aren't necessarily talked about. It's not just all pyramids and stones. It's it's stuff that doesn't necessarily get talked about in popular shows like this very often. And that's really, really cool. I think that's cool. The Underground Caves in Turkey.
00:54:01
Speaker
Yeah, we didn't even really talk about those, but those were so cool. I've never even heard of those before. It's really neat. And I want to mention something about that real quick. They have the the one which name I can't remember. Did we write it down? We did. Darren Kuyu. Yeah. So that was one of the, I guess one of the earlier ones that was found and it could have held about 20,000 people was yeah excavated in this soft ash, which was also really strong, but soft enough to carve out. Let's just say it's underground dwellings that go down something like 80 meters. Yeah. it's Crazy. Yeah. and And then once they started looking, there's over 40 or 50 of those that go down way far. And then they said, when you only include when you start to include the ones that are only one or two levels deep, there's over 200 in this area of Turkey. And I think what I took away from that is, I mean, it's also like passed down knowledge, too. yeah you know People are and not passed down from an ancient civilization, passed down locally. you know People are saying, hey, this is actually kind of a
00:54:58
Speaker
You know, we don't have to worry about weather. We don't have to worry about stuff. We can still grow things on the surface, but then we can live down below where it's always the same temperature. It's always working out. You know, so um why wouldn't other cultures do that? You see that throughout all kinds of places where people build something and other people say, that's a good idea. Yeah, too.
00:55:15
Speaker
Yeah, and if it's already there too, why wouldn't you keep using it? If you need a place to get out of the scorching sun for the summer and it already exists, great. Or maybe there's an invading army coming and you need a place to hide, great, it's already there. Somebody built it 500 years ago, make use of it. I mean, look at Oregon. Portland is a pretty cool town. They've got a lot of neat things and Eugene was like, me too.
00:55:35
Speaker
So, sorry Eugene, but it's true. Eugene is the new Portland. Right, Eugene is the new Portland, but it's not like Portland passed down that information. Eugene was just like, Portland's cool, I want that here. Not really sure about your analogy, but okay, let's go with it. It's absolutely true.
00:55:48
Speaker
But Poland got all of its ideas from Seattle, and so oh my god hashtag truth. Oh, says the the Washingtonian here. so yeah Yeah. So anyway, go watch the show. Don't not watch the show. Yeah, but be skeptical. But one thing he did say that I think is actually sadly true, ah we stop a lot of roadside you know signs and
Encouragement for Independent Verification
00:56:08
Speaker
things like that. You see this like, oh, historical event happened here signs and things like that.
00:56:13
Speaker
One of the things he did say was true was do your own research on that stuff if you really want to know the story because a lot of times these signs are put up by historical societies, they're put up by almost individuals, they're put up by a lot of different groups and things, and they're not always updated. yeah right They're not always updated. So if you see something and it sounds like, is that actually true? Look it up online and see if there's some other information you can find about it. you know, more than likely most of what is on the sign is true. yeah um And we're not, archaeologists aren't keeping people from updating those signs because we don't like the theories. He was implying
Critique of Hancock's Victim Narrative
00:56:45
Speaker
that. No, he is. yeah this whole Like we said, this whole thing really did feel like an attack on archaeologists and also historians and geologists to some extent too. And that is just a little bit unfair. And I think the thing to leave leave you with is
00:57:00
Speaker
Not only is he portraying archaeologists as a bad guy, he's portraying himself as a victim. And Graham Hancock is nobody's victim. yeah the like People are saying things about him because he is provoking them yeah and he is not a victim here. So that that is just
Engagement with Media Opportunities for Archaeologists
00:57:20
Speaker
and ridiculous. This is a call to oral archaeologists out there that if the call comes down from a producer to do any show, I don't care what it's about. If you're going to be the lead, please do it. Yeah. Because we need more people to accept those sorts of positions. I've said this on many podcasts that I've done on all all many different shows. We need people like us who are into this sort of promotion and doing these things to actually get on those TV shows. Yeah. To get on them and and do them. Why does Graham Hancock have a popular eight episode Netflix series? so Because he wanted one. Yeah. If we don't engage, then we don't get to control the narrative or at least contribute to the narrative. You know, like we're not, we're not helping form the public mind. If we don't, if we're not out there, if we close off like serpent mounted, I'm kind of really annoyed that serpent mount closed their doors to Graham Hancock and wouldn't let him film there because they didn't think it was going to support their narrative. Well, no, of course it wasn't, but
00:58:17
Speaker
If you don't engage in the conversation, then how can you have a voice in it? You you you lose the ability to have a voice, which is, exactly I don't think was the right move, personally. Well, we're taking our voice and needing some leftover turkey right now. so Yeah, totally. With that, let's have your opinions. Feel free to email chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com. And I want to hear what you have to think about this. Yeah, definitely. yeah All right. We'll see you next time. Bye.
00:58:48
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. Music for this show is called, I Wish You Would Look, from the band C Hero. Again, thanks for listening, and have an awesome day.
00:59:11
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.